Source: The GuardianLarry Elliott, Heather Stewart and John Hooper
Fears that Europe's sovereign debt crisis was spiralling out of
control have intensified as political chaos in Athens and Rome, and
looming recession, created panic on world markets.
Reports emerging from Brussels said that Germany and France had begun preliminary talks on a break-up of the eurozone, amid fears that Italy would be too big to rescue.
Despite Silvio Berlusconi's
announcement that he would step down as prime minister once austerity
measures were pushed through parliament, a collapse of investor
confidence in the eurozone's third-biggest economy sent interest rates
in Italy to the levels that triggered bailouts in Portugal, Greece and Ireland.
